1966: The Year the Decade Exploded

1966: The Year the Decade Exploded

The pop world accelerated and broke through the sound barrier in 1966. In America, in London, in Amsterdam, in Paris, revolutionary ideas slow-cooking since the late '50s reached boiling point. In the worlds of pop, pop art, fashion, and radical politics -- often fueled by perception-enhancing substances and literature -- the "Sixties," as we have come to know them, hit their Modernist peak. A unique chemistry of ideas, substances, freedom of expression, and dialogue across pop cultural continents created a landscape of immense and eventually shattering creativity.

Jon Savage's 1966 is a monument to the year that shaped the pop future of the balance of the century. Exploring canonical artists like The Beatles, The Byrds, Velvet Underground, The Who, and The Kinks, 1966 also goes much deeper into the social and cultural heart of the decade through unique archival primary sources.

Promotion info

2016 is the 50th anniversary of defining year in global pop cultural history, 1966. Jon Savage's exploration of the key highs, lows and revolutionary moments, will be at the centre of reflection on what made that year so uniquely resonant.

Awards

Winner of Penderyn Music Book Prize 2016.

Author description

Jon Savage is the author of England's Dreaming: Sex pistols and Punk Rock and Teenage: The Creation of Youth, 1875 - 1945. He has written sleevesnotes for Wire, St. Etienne and the Pet Shop Boys, among others, and his compilations include: Meridian 1970 (Heavenly/EMI 2005); Queer Noises: From the Closest to the Charts 1961 - 1976 (Trikont 2006); and Dreams Come True: Classic Electro 1982-87 (Domino 2008).